


Sleepless Nights

by vtn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-18
Updated: 2010-08-18
Packaged: 2017-11-18 09:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/559277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vtn/pseuds/vtn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson can't sleep.  Fortunately, he's not the only one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleepless Nights

**Author's Note:**

> For a request on sherlockbbc_fic: gen cuddling!

For some people, if it isn't one thing, it's another. For John Watson, it is everything all at once. It is a sleepless night with visions of machine gun fire flashing in front of his eyelids whenever he shuts them. It is the patient he had earlier that day with an embolism: that feeling that you can do nothing. It is the phone call at 03:00 from Harriet, swearing drunkenly down the line about women and the world and taxes; he can almost hear the spittle on her mobile.

His life is held together by these very thin threads, he thinks. Getting thinner.

Mrs. Hudson finds him sitting on the upstairs toilet with the door open, sobbing dry into his hands. This woman can hear everything. For a moment John doesn't even look up.

"I'm sorry to barge in on you like this, love," she says. He watches the hem of her housecoat sway between her pink slippers. "I just always worry about my boys." We're her boys now? John wonders. "I've got the kettle on downstairs. Sherlock's been up all night."

In the sitting room Sherlock has lit a fire and is feeding it various scraps of different sorts of paper. When he finally looks up he's holding the poker with a long thin strip of newsprint on the end that is singeing bright yellow-orange and curling up. He raises his starkly blue eyes. John looks at the black rings underneath, at the way Sherlock's eyelids drag, and sees that Mrs. Hudson wasn't exaggerating. 

"Sit, boys," she says, gesturing at the sofa. She brings in a platter with tea and scones from the kitchen. John falls back into the cushions, lets them overtake him. Sherlock perches daintily on the sofa's edge, still playing with the burning paper, as much as Sherlock Holmes ever plays with anything. Mrs. Hudson takes her seat between them and wraps an arm around John's shoulder. He nearly chokes. Sherlock gets the same treatment, and in response he lifts his teacup and stares at it as if expecting it to answer. He doesn't once flinch.

Within about twenty minutes, Sherlock is snoring on Mrs. Hudson's shoulder. John is still wide awake, but he brings his arm around his landlady's waist and doesn't mind that his bones are so heavy.


End file.
